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Wumbian reef panther
An adult female Wumbian reef panther, camouflaged in the rippling waves of ocean light by her own speckled body, glides silently through the clear coastal waters of the Wumbian divide towards the sargassum forests to feed, entirely unseen by a small frogatebird itself hunting just inches above her, but in an entirely different world. They are two very different creatures, brought together for only a brief moment, in a rare and fleeting interlude thanks to the sargassum community. Lurking just under the waters of the tidal forest is also one of Sheatheria's stealthiest and most efficient carnivores. It is the apex predator of the habitat at nearly thirty feet nose to tail and it may weigh up to ten thousand pounds, yet it moves through the waters and shimmies through tight tangles of seaweed and roots almost effortlessly with a flexible and sinuous body. Though the resemblance is not hard to see - especially to primitive sorts - this is no whale. This creature has long whiskers all over its face and a fleshy, wolfy grin. It's eyes are large and there is no melon - it is a visual hunter with no use of sonar. It has no fins, pectoral or dorsal, no fluke on its short tail, and only two flippers in the form of heavily webbed, broad hind feet which emerge only at the ankle from the smooth form of its elongated body. It maneuvers solely with powerful kicks of its hind limbs in the manner of a grebe and steers by its rudder-like tail. Though immensely large, it regularly hunts in waters so shallow that its belly rubs the sea floor to ambush animals crossing between sargassum isles, kicking itself forward and sliding along its belly until it nearly leaves the sea entirely. It doesn't worry about beaching itself, for its powerful hind legs, though insufficient to stand it upright, are well-adapted to push it back to safety of deeper waters if it finds itself water too shallow to support its bulk. The Wumbian Reef Panther is the third largest living foon in all of Sheatheria by weight and the fourth longest. Belonging to a different clade than the much smaller bird-like species that also share its habitat, it is a pelagic foon, separated from the avimorph foons by 34 million years, and is easily discerned by its flexible spine and its flippers, the knees of which are enclosed in the muscle of its body cavity but which remain outside in the smaller avimorph foons. Like most pelagic foons, the reef panther is an active carnivore adapted to spending great amounts of time under water, being a better swimmer and a more efficient diver than its smaller relatives which are more dependent on the surface. The reef panther is unique amongst in family in its habitat, a rare solitary coastal hunter coming from a mainly open-water group of social pack-hunting predators constituting some of the southern hemisphere's most fearsome oceanic carnivores, more tolerant to temperate climates than prawnwhales and uninhibited by the constraint of a terrestrial breeding habit like the sea tyrants. The Wumbian reef panther, therefore, is also bit of an exception with its preference for warm polar seas. It occurs around all Wumbian coasts, occasionally appearing as a vagrant as far east as central Aenvarna. It does not breed here, however, and only accidentally does it ever move further north towards the Servallian coasts, for it is a species that struggles to survive in the vast separating expanse of open ocean without cover to hunt amongst. It is subsequently in the Wumbian divide and the sargassum community that this king of the shallow seas is truly most at home, moving through and under the the dense plant growth in search of prey - in particular, the abundant sea rabbits, which may make up more than 80% of its diet, and catching them by surprise. The reef panther is a tetrapod specialist, favoring slow-moving terrestrial or semi-aquatic prey considerably smaller than itself which it can ambush and overpower, rather than pursue for great distance. It only very rarely feeds upon fishes, filling in the rest of its diet instead with sea birds, phytosaurs and smaller foons and other marine mammals, including - rarely - even the young of sea elephants, and most prey is shaken to death or simply crushed in the jaws if not overly large before being swallowed often mostly in one mangled piece. Animals often play with their prey for a prolonged period of time before consuming it, or sometimes even killing it, and mothers actively teach their pups how to hunt and kill different varieties of animals over their two- to three-year-long childhoods - a process that includes, as it does in felines, the presentation of disabled but very much alive animals for the young to practice upon. The reef panther is intelligent and adaptable and may take prey in any number of ways. Some individuals seem to specialize in the ambush of small terrestrial animals pulled into the water from shore while other prefer a more active hunting style, lunging in pursuit of sea rabbits and other animals and grabbing them unaware from below as they cross open water between islands. They are very capable of learning, and though predominately loners, some some individuals have been observed to work in tandem to obtain food, with one specimen hauling its weight onto a mat of floating algae and flipping it over and another grabbing the panicked animals that fall with it into the water while the beached animal untangles itself and returns to share the spoils. Sea panthers are normally sedentary but don't hold regular territories - the Wumbian Divide is such a rich environment that there is little intra-specific competition for resources. Males may mate females at any time of year and are fairly unusual amongst large carnivores in not generally showing any aggression or hostility to offspring that are not their own - possibly because due to the transient nature of the mother and father's relationship after coitus he may never know who sired his offspring and who did not. The mother almost always has twins which are born no larger than collies and are heavily reliant of parental care for the first several years - but especially several months - of their lives. Afforded an amenity unknown to her relatives in more open sea environments, the mother reef panther may hide her young in makeshift dens in the sargassum while she hunts when her pups are very young, taking advantage of the youngster's small size and ability to leave the water to keep them safe. Out of the sea they're safer than below, but here they may still fall victim to marauding aerial predators including swiftlets and pirate frogatebirds as well as jawwalkers. The mother will often grieve for a prolonged period of several weeks if she loses her pups while out hunting, and a female that finds herself in such a situation is very unlikely to exhibit any such denning behavior with future offspring, leaving it a behavior often seen only in very young mothers whose own hunting skills aren't yet good enough to work around the antics of the distracting young when they tag along. Experienced veterans often instead opt to keep them alongside in the open sea and take the risk of losing a meal because they are too noisy or slow to keep up in pursuit for the security of knowing they are protected. By two months of age, the pups can easily keep up with adults in the water, and by eight months, they are large and agile enough to fend off most any threats the sargassum community can throw at them. Though they hunt in the shallows, reef panthers spend most of their time otherwise in more open waters one to five miles from shore, where freed from many predators of their own by merit of size, they're free to swim at their leisure and soak up the warm polar sun until hunger beckons them back into the mangroves to lurk another day. = by Sheather888 = Category:Sheatheria Category:Alien Life Forms Category:Fandom